Predators in the suburbs

Times Union staff writer Paul Grondahl reports about the increase in the predator population:

ALBANY — A rising number of sly and wily newcomers are skulking across Capital Region suburbs.Not all homeowners are pleased about this wildlife invasion, nor are those slow-footed gray squirrels whose days are numbered.

In the Random Acres development off Carman Road in Guilderland, several juvenile red foxes have emerged from their dens this month. Their white-tipped, bushy-tailed arrival, while captivating, is not appreciated by high-strung dogs on leashes or overly protective mothers of small children.

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls about foxes in yards in the last few weeks, but they’re wild animals and there’s nothing we can do,” said Guilderland animal control officer Richard Savage. “We’re not licensed to trap them. Even if we could trap them, what are supposed to do with them? Drop them on the other side of town so they become someone else’s problem?”

Across pockets of wooded hollows and necklaces of grasslands strung between Albany, Schenectady and Troy, packs of Eastern coyotes are yipping and howling at hair-raising decibels to intimidate competing canis groups. “We see coyotes cruising along the power lines, snapping in the tall grass at mice, which must seem like nature’s bonbons to a coyote,” said Andrea Lain, who lives on the edge of Delmar near Clarksville and has observed frolicking red fox pups and a bobcat feasting on rabbits near her home.

In protected Pine Bush acreage stitched across Colonie and adjoining municipalities, the fisher, a fast-climbing member of the weasel family, has found its niche by turning the evolutionary tables on the squirrel — which cannot outrun these predators by scurrying up a tree as squirrels had done for decades to elude coyotes and foxes.

A combination of mild winters and decline in hunting and trapping has contributed to the rise in the critters and in the number of human encounters, said Jim Farquhar, a state Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist in the western Adirondacks. “In suburban areas, where they’re not harassed, they do develop a certain tolerance for people,” he said.

The wild kingdom that was once confined to the dark woods — a trail of blood, an eviscerated carcass and a pile of feather and bone fragments — is now being played out within sight of backyard swing sets and in-ground pools. The sight has left more than a few suburbanites a bit squeamish.

Paul Brucker witnessed survival of the fittest up-close early one Sunday morning last month. He looked out his kitchen window and saw a red fox streak across his backyard and snatch a squirrel into its jaws as the squirrel scavenged for seeds beneath a bird feeder.

“Out of nowhere, the fox grabbed the squirrel. Bam!” he said. “The fox clamped the squirrel in its mouth until it stopped moving. It was a pretty quick and vicious kill.”

A few weeks later, Brucker saw a red fox dead, apparently hit and killed by a car, along Carman Road a few blocks from his home.

Researcher Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the State Museum, has studied fisher and coyote populations around the Pine Bush with the help of radio collars.

“There’s a lot going on right now and part of the story is that animals are adapting more to humans and the other part is there is less pressure on coyotes and foxes from trapping and hunting,” said Kays, who spoke about his coyote research to about 100 people Tuesday at a talk at the State Museum.

Kays described the Eastern coyote’s surprisingly quick rise in population and behavioral shifts since the species began migrating into the state’s rural areas in the 1940s and showed up in the Pine Bush in the 1990s. Foxes were here first and went from predator to prey.

“Coyotes persecute foxes,” Kays said. “Coyotes own the deep woods, but they’re very shy and skittish around people, while foxes have lost their fear of humans over time. What’s happening now is foxes are staying closer to humans in suburbia so they can avoid becoming the prey of coyotes.”

Both the Eastern coyote and fisher are secretive, fearful of humans and rarely seen, but more plentiful than most people realize. The estimated statewide population of 20,000 to 30,000 coyotes is almost certainly low, according to experts. Coyotes are booming in the Pine Bush after a decade and they’re slightly larger (in the 30- to 40-pound range for males) and with broader skulls than Western coyotes. That’s a genetic advantage in killing deer and larger prey. That’s helped coyotes to spread five times faster in this region than elsewhere in the U.S.

The diet of hybrid coyotes in the Pine Bush habitat is roughly 30 percent deer, 30 percent rabbit, 30 percent mouse and about 1 percent domestic cats. “They’ll kill cats occasionally, but they have many more opportunities to take cats but they seem to prefer a natural diet,” he said. “They eat almost no garbage. You don’t find McDonald’s wrappers in their scat.”

Coyotes are largely solitary, but they’ll travel in small groups of two or three, particularly when hunting deer or rabbits, Kays said.

After more than a decade in the Pine Bush, coyote have not learned to cross roads and they face an 80 percent mortality rate each year. The No. 1 cause of death is car collisions. Hunting and trapping is in decline, in part because the price of pelts has fallen. A four-month coyote hunting season locally begins in late October with no limit on how many can be killed. But they’re an elusive quarry.

The more coyotes killed, the more they appear to breed in an evolutionary tit-for-tat, Kays said.

Similarly, an ongoing fisher study using motion detectors that trigger nighttime video cameras suggests their numbers are rising because they’ve adapted to their biggest killer, motor vehicles. Over time, they figured out how to use culverts, tunnels and underpasses to avoid busy roads.

Kays expects coyotes will eventually learn to cross safely under roads and he’s concerned about them learning not to fear humans.

There have been several highly publicized recent attacks of humans by coyotes from Westchester County to Nova Scotia. Kays fears suburbanites who feed wildlife could create a nightmare scenario.

“If coyotes are being fed by people, they could lose their fear of humans too much and come to see a small child as a 20-pound lunch toddling around,” Kays warned.